Strike Three

I can't believe we are here again, with another failed ICSI cycle under our belt :-(

There was no third time lucky for us despite our perfect looking blastocyst.

I think we're still in shock, we feel numb and incredibly sad that it's over, again. I'm unable describe the disappointment or understand why we continue to be tortured for over 3 years now, it's incomprehensible.

I cannot believe 'this' is my life, surely this is just a nightmare and I'll wake up sometime soon.

 

Blast Off

 

Amazingly, we have 'blast' off,  what a ball of nerves Mr Moon and I have been this morning . . . worrying, wondering and waiting. There is no call on Day 4 and no call on the morning of the transfer so we arrived at the clinic this morning completely in the dark as to what awaited us. It wasn't until I was lying in the operating theatre that the embryologist told us the progress of our embryos -

DAY 5 UPDATE

• 1 good blastocyst - transferred
• 2 not so good blastocysts (not suitable for freezing)
• 3 embryo's pre blastocyst stage / morulas (will be checked on Day 6)

A huge sigh of relief to have finally made this stage to blastocyst for this first time. In cycle 1 we had a Day 5 transfer but our best embryo had only made it as far as the morula stage, in cycle 2 we had a Day 3 transfer.  

We had the good blastocyst transferred and now we wait some more, but for the time being we are enjoying being happy :-)

Wake Up Call

After our miraculous 100% fertilisation:

DAY 2 UPDATE

• 9 embryos growing
• 7 are very good

DAY 3 UPDATE

• 7 embryos growing
• 3 are good, 4 are average

Mr Moon and I were so anxious waiting for that call this morning! So so so pleased that we still have some embryo's in the running, as there are 3 that are 'good' the clinic suggest a Day 5 transfer as they can't decide which one has the most chance of success. As this cycle is a funded cycle and the latest rules for our Primary Care Trust are in effect we can only transfer one embryo this time round.

Yesterday I suffered some unexpected pain episodes from my egg collection procedure from 2 days ago. On my drive into work I experienced some pretty sharp intermittent stabbing pains and I struggled to get into the office. It was all a little scary at the time but after a while the pain subsided to a more constant pain but much less intense. I rang the clinic as this hadn't happened on my previous cycles, they suggested paracetamol and more water and to come into the clinic if it got worse in the afternoon, luckily it started to subside by the evening. I'm left with the odd painful twinge and so hopefully it's passing and never to return!

Although this is turning out to be our most promising cycle so far, we are both feeling very cautious about the whole thing, but I guess that's to be expected after our last two cycles. it's hard to let your mind imagine that we can get to the next stage, we can't take things for granted, we can simply hope for the best.

To re-cap on our last cycles in terms of Day 3 vs Day 5 transfer:

Cycle 1 (Bourn Hall Clinic) - We had a Day 5 transfer, after starting off with 8 embryo's by Day 5 none had progressed to the blastocyst stage, the best we had was a morula so it was a few hours behind and we had this one embryo transferred. No embryo's survived to freezing quality.

Cycle 2 (Herts & Essex Clinic) - We had a Day 3 transfer as there were 2 of the 6 embryo's that already stood out from the rest and so the clinic advised to have the two put back that day, we'll never know for sure whether these embryos progressed to the blastocyst stage, but we assume not. No embryo's survived to freezing quality.

We won't receive any more wake up calls now and my Day 5 transfer is scheduled for Saturday, fingers crossed that when we arrive at the clinic there is a moon-blast waiting for us to come home.

Ten Out of Ten

Top marks for us, I really can't believe it, we had our fertilisation report today -

DAY 1 UPDATE

• 11 eggs collected
• 10 mature and suitable for ICSI
• 10 embryos!

After a sleepless night, I feel a tad silly now for worrying that this cycle had produced the least number of eggs as we now have the most number of embryos at Day 1 from all our cycles and 100% fertilisation. Our last two cycles have been around the 60% fertilisation mark, so this feels like a bit of a miracle.  The embryologist also mentioned that Mr Moon's sample was borderline normal, yay, another first. So we're happy for today :-)

It's really early days, and I remain cautious as we're still not sure what will happen at Day 3, will our embryo's deteriorate like our past two cycles, or could we be third time lucky?

Egg collection yesterday was uneventful, I was super nervous beforehand like usual but all went fine with the stabbing of the ovaries! I didn't have the anaesthetist Mr Smooth this time, instead we had Mr Smiles . . . what is it with these anaesthetists, are they all on happy drugs?  I'm still a little tender today but taking it easy, hopefully this will have passed by tomorrow.

So we wait, worry and wait some more.